I'm a sinner, no better than any other human being. I have no personal bragging rights. My only boast is that, in spite of my many sins and my numerous faults, through God's grace, given in Jesus Christ, my sins are forgiven and I have a new life.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

House of Heroes. Lead singer Tim Skipper is the son of high school friends and was born just two days after our son, Phil, was born. HoH sound great!

The Lyrics:

In the valley of the dying sunI walk a crooked path aloneI came across the shadow of a manWith an angel's breath

'O boy' he said to me'I see your future''Though you long for peaceThe sword is your father

I'm thinking of youI'm thinking of you when I kill a good manTo keep myself from being killed by himI'm thinking of youI'm thinking of you when I hold my girlAnd wonder if she'll ever love againI'm thinking of youWash the blood off my hands

Bathed in the powder of a thousand gunsI am the king of sorrowsWatered by the tears of the innocent onesThe river growsIt movesIt swells

'Son' It calls to me'Your days are numberedSow the seeds you willBut I am the reaper'

'I'm thinking of youI'm thinking of you when you kill a good manTo keep yourself from being killed by himI'm thinking of youI'm thinking of you when you hold your girlAnd wonder if she'll ever love againI'm thinking of youWash the blood off your hands'

I howled at the moon like a wolf in the nightYou want to finish itWe're gonna finish it right

And then I felt it with a chill up my spineThere are no words to use that truly describeThe glory of the angel or the terror in meTonight will be my ending or tonight my new beginning

All through the nightI wrestled the angelTo undo the curseThat's burdened me all of my life

And for the first time I could seeThat God was not my enemy

"I'm thinking of you"

Like pieces of the sunOur light burns on and on and onLike stars in the night sky we shineI'm living to shine on

[UPDATE: Sports radio callers are after Jim Tressel's scalp. One guy I heard after the Buckeyes' loss to Purdue said that "the game has passed...[Tressel] by."

My take is different. First, the offensive line, which almost everyone who follows Buckeye football knew coming into the year was a big question mark, seems fairly limited either in creating a safe passing pocket for Terrelle Pryor or blowing open holes for the running game.

Second, I think that Pryor has been wrestling with confidence issues all season long. The tentativeness with which he played during the USC game earlier this year seems to have carried forward to the subsequent five games.

Much preseason chatter said that the success or failure of the Buckeyes '09 campaign depended on Pryor performing, not just well, but as a superstar. It overlooked the important fact that Pryor, a sophomore who was the starter for half a season last year, is this year surrounded by almost entirely new personnel at the skill positions. In addition, I wonder how confident any of us would be if our passing pocket was collapsing all the time.

Jim Tressel is a five-time national champion (four times at Division 2 Youngstown State and once at OSU) who admittedly creates conservative game plans for his offenses. But I personally believe that under his leadership, the Buckeyes have, in some ways, overachieved this season.

Today, the defense had an uncharacteristically bad day, allowing Purdue to get away with little dump passes under coverage which, I think, set up the Boilermakers' running game. A squad that has been carrying the weight for the Buckeyes so far this season could be expected to eventually have an off-day. The D just couldn't compensate for the deficiencies in offensive execution, as it had in five of the first six games, today.

But, in his heart of hearts, Coach Tressel must be hoping that his incoming freshman offensive line will step up next year in a big way.

In the meantime, I know that Tressel, who I think is the best college coach in the country, will continue to challenge the Buckeyes to learn from this loss and keep getting better.

If the offensive line can be shored up in some way, maybe Pryor can relax, have fun, and play the way everybody knows he can.

Of course, my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not a football coach, but a preacher!]

In it, Pastor Waak used the Biblical narratives of the lives and interactions of Saul, Israel's first king, and the younger man David, whom God chose to take Saul's place. Waak said that in any conflict, we are likely to exhibit traits like one or the other of these men.

Before going into the specifics of this, John made several observations:

In conflict, we must learn to be Christians who stand on our feet, often that will mean running away from actual conflict.

Conflict does happen even in churches and has an impact on us personally and as congregations.

Conflict rarely yields a winner.

Conflict makes us feel "ugly and torn," not "a purposeful child of God."

Most frightening of all, conflict can cover us with unrighteous anger. The Bible says that Satan kills, steals, and destroys. We can see how Satan, the Evil One, employs to kill, steal, and destroy our faith and our fellowship as Christian people. By contrast, Pastor Waak, pointed out, Jesus came into the world to give us abundant life!

Then, Pastor Waak showed the contrast between Saul and David in their conflict.

I urge you to contact Pastor Waak at johnwaak@oursaviourslutheran.com. Tell him you'd like a copy of his fantastic breakout presentation given on October 6, at the annual gathering of Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. The group participation piece can be a great template for congregations dealing with conflicts.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 10:17-31Once, my wife Ann was having some skin cancers removed at a hospital in Cincinnati. I kissed her, watched her go away, prayed for her, and then began to read a book in the surgical waiting room.

Two women walked in. One was loud, forceful, and authoritative-sounding. The other was quiet and submissive, hanging on every word from the other woman’s mouth. (And believe me, a lot of words came from her mouth!)

What became clear was that the wordy one saw herself as an expert on Christian faith and the Bible. She was instructing the other woman. Also clear was that this “instructor” noticed that in the waiting room, she had a largely captive audience, an audience with whom she was more than willing to share the benefit of all her "knowledge."

She must have gone on non-stop for about five minutes, though it seemed like thirty, when I found I was barely able to mentally tune her out and concentrate on what I’d been reading before she barged in.

But then she said something that sliced through my resistance.

“The Ten Commandments,” she told the other woman, “don’t apply to we Christians. We don’t need God’s Law!”

I still don’t know whether I was right in choosing to be polite rather than walking over to that windbag—forgive me, Jesus, but that’s what she was—and telling her, “Please be quiet, or you’re going to make that poor friend of yours as confused as you are!”

Where did she get the idea that the Ten Commandments had been rescinded because of Jesus? She certainly couldn’t have gotten it from Jesus. In today’s Gospel lesson from Mark, for example, in His conversation with the rich man who yearns for eternal life, Jesus mentions the Fifth through Eighth Commandments:

“You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness..”

Then Jesus cites the Fourth Commandment:

“Honor your father and mother.”

Sandwiched between them, Jesus also seems to amplify the proscription against stealing by saying, “You shall not defraud.”

On the bases of this passage alone, a Christian would know that the waiting room instructor was all wet. The law of the Ten Commandments still applies to Christians and to the whole world today.

You see, if you read the Bible and are paying attention, you observe that there are really three kinds of laws that God gave to the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament. (This isn’t rocket science, by the way, folks. Even I can understand it.)

The first is ritual or sacrificial law. These were laws that regulated what—be it a lamb, a dove, or a stalk of cereal--was to be sacrificed for sin, along with stipulations about things like where, when, and how.

If the waiting room woman had said, “Old Testament ritual law doesn’t apply to we Christians,” I might have given her a mental standing ovation. (I wouldn't have actually stood up and said it. After all, I’m a Lutheran; I can't be too demonstrative.)

A second kind of law you see in the Old Testament is civil law. Remember, that ancient Israel wasn’t a pluralistic democracy like we have in the United States. It was a theocracy. The people were all of one religion and they were ruled by God Himself.

Ancient Israel is in the distant past, though. The civil laws that occupy much of Old Testament books like Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers no longer apply. If the waiting room woman had said that, I would have applauded her, too.

But there’s a third kind of law in the Old Testament law. It’s called the Mosaic Law, the moral law, or simply, the Ten Commandments. These are the laws God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Our Gospel lesson isn’t the only time that Jesus talked about the Ten Commandments. He returned to them repeatedly, expounding on them, deepening our understanding of them.

This moral law reflects God’s will for all humanity for all time. That must be the reason why, when Martin Luther wrote The Small Catechism for families sitting around their dinner tables and The Large Catechism for clergy who were ignorant of the Bible, he started by talking about the Ten Commandments.

Yet the Ten Commandments, important as they are, cannot save us from sin, death, or futile living. In the New Testament, the Ephesian Christians were reminded that, “by grace you have been saved through faith” in Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ and not obedience to the Ten Commandments is what saves us.

All of which is why I used to find Jesus’ encounter with the rich man in today’s Gospel lesson so puzzling.

Remember that it begins with the man asking Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” How, the man wonders, can he be saved from sin and death and futility?

Jesus doesn’t say, simply and directly, as He does elsewhere, “Follow Me.”

Instead, Jesus tells the man, “You know the commandments…,” then recites a few of them.

What puzzled and frankly bothered me about Jesus’ answer is that He seems to be saying, contrary to what He said many other times in many different ways, that a person could be saved by obeying the moral law. But we know from our reading of the rest of the New Testament that isn't true, don't we?

I remained mystified until I noticed two other things in this passage.

First, there’s the response of the rich man. “I’ve kept all these commandments since I was a kid.” You only have to know the thoughts that go on in your own mind and the things you’ve done that you hope nobody else has ever observed to know that his statement isn’t true. The man may have thought he’d kept the commandments his whole life, but only Jesus can really make the claim of perfect obedience of the moral law of God.

But here are the words what unlocked the meaning of this passage for me:

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own…give the money to the poor…then come, follow Me.”

Jesus had held up the moral law to this man like a mirror in which he could see all of his shortcomings, his sins, his need of forgiveness, his need of repentance, and his need of faith in God rather than in himself or his money. But he refused to look into the mirror. He was sure that he was a good guy whose slate was clean.

But Jesus, Who loved the man, could see the idols that the man worshiped, the things that he turned to in order to give his life meaning, his money and his possessions.

The Twelve Step movement tells us that when an addict is controlled by alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or pornography, or whatever it may be, it does him or her no good to ignore the addiction. The addict must acknowledge it, drop the thing that keeps them from being whole and healthy, and rely totally on their higher power, God, to help them through.

The rich man’s addiction, his idols, were, as I say, money and possessions. In order to grab the free gift of eternal life, Jesus was telling him, he had to drop his fake god.

It means laying down the life we would prefer and, instead, taking our direction from Him. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray to “our Father,” “Thy will be done.”

Jesus looks at you with love each day. Be willing each day to lay aside the things that keep you from receiving the life He wants to give to you. You don’t want to face a single moment of adversity without Jesus’ help. You don’t want to miss out on a single blessing Jesus has designed just for you.